Hackerteen is an educational project that trains teenagers to work with computer security. With an innovative and fun methodology, young people learn how to protect companies - not to break into them - while reducing time spent on computer games, MSN and MySpace.

Hackerteen classes are currently availible in Portuguese only, but will shortly be introduced in English and Spanish.

That's an incredibly cool concept...one that I have mixed feelings on, though. Had that been available to me as a teen, I would most likely be much further along in my career. However, I probably wouldn't have been quite the success with the ladies

this is so great. Not just because I am a recovering comic nerd, but I think it is good to have some form of pop culture promoting security and not the actual hacking part. I actually thought about this in great detail before...Every group has a good and bad counter part. There is nothing out there to counter the Hacker image. A kid may grow up wanting to be a hacker...but why would he grow up thinking "I want to be a security analyst!". At one time kids thought Al Capone was so cool. Then Elliot Ness, the FBI and other things filled the white hat void.

Artful Dodger wrote:A kid may grow up wanting to be a hacker...but why would he grow up thinking "I want to be a security analyst!".

Easy, I can answer that one from personal experience. After watching Hackers and reading Mentor's Manifesto, I wanted to be a hacker. But I really didn't want to hear 'pass the soap' after doing something stupid, hence security professional.

I've just taken a closer look at the site and think it could be really useful for anyone starting out as a kid.

The section that really caught my attention was 'For Parents'. It could make a lot a people's lives easier if they had some way of explaining to on non-technical parent what it really means to be a hacker. From my perspective I was lucky, my mother read the first few chapters of 'A complete hacker's handbook' by Dr-K (at least until the binary and TCP/IP stuff confused her), after that I got no more complaints (and a few more books for christmas).

However, after I recently moved in with my girlfriend I still get od comments from friends/relatives when the read the titles on my bookshelf. This sort of information, if it gets wide exposure, could increase the number of talented individuals able to enter the profession and possibly increase the level of awareness and funding available from other parts of the business if the suits and beancounters can better understand what they are paying for.

I think this site could be a valuable asset with kids. Even if this doesn't bestow upon them all the things to go along with "Ethical Hacking". They will begin to understand the concept of just how dangerous the internet can be. There are some subjects that should be taught in school but alast they are not. If somebody other than myself explains to my kid what he should and should not be doing on social websites and questionable sites for gaming, then it should help out. They seem to have their stuff together and it's not as if it's a 5 hour course. It looks fairly drawen out.